If you're the kind of person who uses your 4x4 as it was intended... whether it's hunting/fishing/camping/wheeling/"overlanding"/whatever, you probably already know that the tires spec'd on most vehicles from the manufacturer are garbage. They are built for longevity on normal street conditions with thin light-weight sidewalls to optimize fuel mileage, but little else. So most of us who enjoy the back country generally ditch the highway treads for an All-Terrain, a Mud-Terrain or something in between for better traction and durability. It doesn't hurt that they look a bit more bad-ass, either. C-mon, you know its true.

can. For me, Baja was always at the top. By way of off roading even more so. But Baja isn’t a small road trip, it’s international travel even though it’s still just down the road from southern california. Baja can be daunting to say the least. So in late 2016 I began my task of taking part in the Trail of Missions, which is put on by Desert Assassins, a company operated by Cameron and Heidi Steele, of Baja racing fame. The Trail of Missions is a 2000 mile journey from the border, to the southern portion of Baja California Sur. Each year follows the royal road through a varied list of historic missions, with incredible landscapes, and the punishing trails connecting them.

t’s all about the mindset. There’s a place right on the beaten path, a place where everyone goes. It’s linked together with a spider web of asphalt and telephone poles. Homes so close together that people have to unintentionally see every move of their neighbors.

Life has a weird way of connecting the dots. I had the good fortune of befriending the masterful Canadian craftsman Peter Long via our Instagram page. He's the face behind @VagabondPapa and @CabinTherapy.

In May of 2016, at 18 years old and still a senior in high school, my brother and I set out on our first major overland trip – a trip I had coined as the “New England Loop.” A trip that would, as Steinbeck put it, absolutely take me. In 4 days I covered over 700 miles of New England, starting in Massachusetts, heading north into Vermont, right up to the border of our friendly northern neighbors in Canada, east into the White Mountains of New Hampshire, into southern Maine, and finally back to Massachusetts.

Factor lighting is making headway into a market that’s totally flooded with competition, but they’re taking a unique stance on their product. Build a durable, quality light at a reasonable price. They’ve accomplished these 10 fold.

So I wanted to provide an AAR (After Action Report on FJ Summit) because I know a lot of people would have loved to go, and between this and TaCo Rock Therapy I think the best Toyota events happen within 3 hours of each other in Moab and Ouray.

I’ll preface this by saying I was incredibly on the fence about going. I tried to register originally for the event, but got on the wait list within 30 seconds. Registration is brutal and I didn’t find out about being on the wait list until mid-april. I signed up thinking worst case I could sell my ticket.